


Love & Marriage

by monster_baby



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Modern Era, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-03-15 20:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monster_baby/pseuds/monster_baby
Summary: A collection of "slice of life" drabbles. Both Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens are insufferable, ambitious, and hopelessly in love; the same end of a magnet and the antithesis of "opposites attract." Somehow they manage to make their marriage work.





	1. tuesday. an argument.

**Author's Note:**

> going through writer's block. keep me in your prayers.

It’s a Tuesday.

There are benefits and detriments to working in the same sector as one’s significant other, and although John’s projects are specialized enough that their paths rarely cross, Alexander isn’t deaf to the bitter, whispered criticisms that float through the halls of Capitol Hill. The Department of Treasury isn’t sticking its nose into whatever garbage pit John’s digging himself into on the House floor, not with tax season just around the corner and the current administration banging out reformation proposals like toddlers smacking their fists on a keyboard, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear. He isn’t oblivious, and the moment his head pops up with a glare the gossipers disperse with a roll of their eyes, but it still puts him on edge. More often than not it’s John, notoriously tactless and outspoken in ways that Alexander can’t always afford to be, swatting Jefferson or Adams away from the proverbial water cooler. 

A functioning system. Their system. The world churns on, peacock politicians soothing their ruffled feathers within the nest of their private offices, but Alexander is up to his ears in emails and voicemails from every fucking desk in the department and he doesn’t even know what he’s defending John from this time.

Baseless aggravation is the bastard child of sleeplessness and work stress. They’ve always been like this. It would be ridiculous to snap at John that Alexander can’t be bothered to defend him at every bend in the road—he can already hear the sound of John’s chair scraping against the floor when he shoves to his feet, barking back that he never asked to be coddled, and perhaps Alexander should keep his big fucking nose in his own business—but the energy crackles and thrums beneath his skin like electricity without an outlet. He hates the politics of their work, of their relationship, of the world around them. Back home the kids are tottering around with their nanny, bare feet slapping against the hardwood, and he wishes…

Alexander shoves his wire frame glasses up onto his forehead and massages his eyes with his fingertips. It would be nice to break from this. They wouldn’t need to go anywhere, just spend the week at home watching movies and Instagramming the twins kissing their fat, long-suffering tomcat each time they find him sunbathing on the duvet. No laptops, no emails, no emergency calls. They would all sleep until sunrise and have pancakes in the kitchen. In his head the fantasy has soft edges, hazy with comfortable longing and sleep. But that’s another argument he doesn’t have the patience to start with John again. For someone whose politics are distinctly anti-establishment, he has maddeningly concrete perceptions of civic engagement; the type of deep, trailblazing determination that exhausts even Alexander eventually.

And Alexander is exhausted.

He reaches for his glasses on the desk-- freezes. Head. Right. Jesus, right.

(Later that afternoon, half-lidded eyes keeping tabs on the molasses-slow tick-tock of his desk clock’s crimson seconds hand, Jefferson bursts through his door and demands that Alexander collect his “fucking ungrateful, agitator husband.” The silence in the car ride home afterwards is louder than any scream.)


	2. it's five o'clock somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go home.

Their schedules are at the beck and call of the twins. It was an odd transition, a stumbling one, peeling themselves from work and each other to answer the wailing cries of their babies or relieve the nanny, but eventually the pieces clicked cleanly into place like fresh puzzle pieces; another corner, their beautiful daughter and son, added to the unfinished thousand piece set. Two years later, and Alexander eagerly anticipates the noiseless tick of his clock towards “closing time,” rubs his weary eyes with the backs of his fingers, glasses shoved high into his hairline. The real challenge is prying his dearest husband from his insulated corner of the world and reminding him—although he’s sure that John doesn’t need reminding, poised like he’s mid-email whenever Alexander strolls through his door, but his long fingers are always too still, too tense, too expectant in their interruption—that Pip and Fran would love to see Papa and Daddy home sometime this century, so wrap it up and make it snappy, Laurens. If you need a secretary, hire one, because it isn’t me!

The routine of it drives him insane. That John would probably still be sitting in tense anticipation all damn night if someone didn’t come to find him is the only thing that keeps their little charade running. It’s one of those itchy, weird quirks about John likely symptomatic of some childhood sob story or unchecked mental illness, but so long as he comes home at the end of the day, Alexander doesn’t actually care enough to poke any further than he needs to. Not his circus, not his monkeys. So he winds his scarf around his neck, packs his bag, and veers sharply off course from the front steps and security station to track down whatever lounge or meeting room John’s commandeered for himself tonight. It’s never the same place, always some obscure fucking corner of the building, and by the time they finish texting back and forth—Alexander more than John, who is either the slowest or most inconsiderate texter on the goddamn planet—he’s irritated and hungry and wants to be home.

John’s head lifts with a sunshiny grin, and Alexander just about throws himself across the board table and throttles him when John’s fingers tap out the last bit of a sentence.

“John,” Alexander warns too-sharply instead, grouchily moving down the long line of chairs. It earns him raised brows and a smaller, more condescending smile as the laptop closes and drops into a bag set out of sight.

John lugs the leather satchel onto the polished table and buckles it up, playful eyes following Alexander’s furious approach. “You wanna pick up dinner after this?”

“I want to go home! I want to see my kids. Our kids!” Alexander explodes. But John’s temper doesn’t rise to the bait, clearly taking some sick pleasure in egging him on, and one day, some day soon, maybe, Alexander will lose his job and his family and everything he’s worked for when he murders his fucking husband in cold blood on Capitol Hill. It’s inevitable. It’s happening, possibly even today.

John pushes his chair back with a grimace and shrugs on his coat, then plucks on each glove. God, it’s today. It’s happening today.


End file.
